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Sunday, 13 March 2011

Ok so...Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is like the female Chinua Achebe or Wole Soyinka of Nigeria. This chic was actually born in Nigeria and schooled in Nigeria so obviously her grammar was perfect (ha ha) her Igbo also (her native language) was perfect, and she had great poise and proved that she deserved to win that Orange Prize for fiction. For those who don't know her, this is a little bio....Born in the town of Enugu, she grew up in the university town of Nsukka in South-Eastern Nigeria, where the University of Nigeria is situated. While she was growing up, her father was a professor of statistics at the University, and her mother worked there as the university registrar. She later moved to the United States for college and she completed a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 2008, she received a Master of Arts in African studies at Yale University.

Her published books include, Purple Hibiscus, was published in 2003, then Half Of A Yellow Sun was published in 2006 and earned her the Orange Noble Prize for fiction. Her third book is called The Thing Around Your Neck and is a collection of short stories. During the meeting, she read a bit of one of the stories from the short story collection and left everyone in awe. I will encourage you get one of her books. They are worth it. She was asked a couple of a questions and she answered all of them perfectly.

One thing that stood out was her advice to all the ladies. She said that she didn't like the idea of little girls reading Cinderella stories because it gave them the idea that men were better and that they needed a man to come and rescue them. She said it prohibited women from living life normally and put men over women. From this, I concluded that she was a strong feminist. She was very inspiring to me and other young women in the hall that day, and for that....I have added her to my list of role models.

Below are some pictures of her that I took....I didn't have a book for her to sign but she signed my bag (believe she was worth it).